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Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-13-210

Second degree murder

Applied in 36 court decisions — leading case State v. Cribbs (1998)

Most recently applied in United States v. Tarrence Parham (October 2024)

Acts 1989, ch. 591, § 1; T.C.A., § 39-13-206; Acts 1990, ch. 980, § 6; 1990, ch. 1038, § 4; 1995, ch. 460, § 2; 2006, ch. 967, § 2; 2018, ch. 934, § 2; 2018, ch. 995, § 1.

How often courts cite this section

1995200020102020202470
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

(1) Second degree murder is: A knowing killing of another;

(2) A killing of another that results from the unlawful distribution of any Schedule I or Schedule II drug, when the drug is the proximate cause of the death of the user; or

(3) A killing of another by unlawful distribution or unlawful delivery or unlawful dispensation of fentanyl or carfentanil, when those substances alone, or in combination with any substance scheduled as a controlled substance by the Tennessee Drug Control Act of 1989, compiled in chapter 17, part 4 of this title and in title 53, chapter 11, parts 3 and 4, including controlled substance analogs, is the proximate cause of the death of the user.

(4) In a prosecution for a violation of this section, if the defendant knowingly engages in multiple incidents of domestic abuse, assault or the infliction of bodily injury against a single victim, the trier of fact may infer that the defendant was aware that the cumulative effect of the conduct was reasonably certain to result in the death of the victim, regardless of whether any single incident would have resulted in the death.

(5) Second degree murder is a Class A felony.

(6) Notwithstanding the Tennessee Criminal Sentencing Reform Act of 1989, compiled in title 40, chapter 35, a person convicted of a violation of subdivision (a)(2) where the victim is a minor shall be punished from within one (1) range higher than the sentencing range otherwise appropriate for the person.

Current official text: Tennessee Code (LexisNexis). Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Tennessee statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.